


Traditional Team Bonding Exercises

by MousesizeDragon



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 07:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/771748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MousesizeDragon/pseuds/MousesizeDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently there are spoilers in the summary, although I haven't seen Iron Man 3 and only saw a crappy youtube recording of a 2 minute trailer which means what I guessed or invented from those 2 minutes is the only 'real' Iron Man 3 content in this fic.</p><p>So look further at your own risk. (Even if I'm not sure if any of this stuff is in the movie or not. Does that make it spoilers, or can I call it coincidence and tell you to suck it up and watch the trailer since this isn't based on the actual movie?)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When The Mandarin destroys Tony’s home none of the other Avengers are even in the same state. These are their reactions to the attack and Tony being missing in action, assumed dead, his lab and life’s work gone. Challenge/Prompt Fic!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pagen_godess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagen_godess/gifts).



> This is a fic prompted to me by Pagen Goddess and I'm giving it as a birthday gift; April 21st, Happy Birthday Pagen!
> 
> I'm sorry it's late but the internet is not working anywhere in my village so I'm having R post it for me.
> 
> WARNING: has assumed Major Character Death and draws on the Extremis storyline(s). Also spoilers for the Iron Man 3 trailer.
> 
> Prompt: “...I’m not sure if you’ve seen the preview for Iron Man three or not but this idea was based off of the scene from that where the new evil doer whose name I can’t remember or spell at the moment blows up Tony’s Malibu home while Tony and Pepper are still inside. I’d like if you could write something about the other avengers reaction to finding out about said event. They can find out about it however you want them too. Fury can tell them or they can end up calling each other or one of them can see the aftermath on the news and freak out and the others can come running. I care not.” –Pagen Goddess
> 
> Disclaimer: None of the Avengers belong to me, and I’m basing this primarily off the movies. Like most of my Avengers/Iron Man fics it's hopefully written so that those who haven't read the comics all that diligently but love the movies will also be able to follow my stories. Also the Prompt was not mine either.

**Tony**

The last thing he saw before he was pulled over the edge of the cliff was Pepper tightly gripping the far doorway. He’d managed to shove her out of danger; the half of the house she was holding on to was stable enough not to fall into the ocean with the rest of it. Then a cable snagged his suit and pulled him over the edge. Thank god she didn’t fall after him because he isn’t sure he’d be able to keep on living if he couldn’t have any hope she was still alive.

He fights his way free of the wreckage in time to avoid being crushed by more chunks of his house. Just before shooting back to the surface he has one of those epiphany moments. If he survives this attack The Mandarin will go after him again, possibly through Pepper as the man has already shown his willingness to attack defenseless civilians, but if he didn’t surface, if he let the terrorist assume he killed Tony, then Pepper would be safe while Tony figures out a way to stop The Mandarin. So he stays under, lets the suit filter the water and provide him with breathable air, then he turns and swims away from the Californian coast. His last act before falling completely off the radar and ditching the identity of Tony Stark is to tell JARVIS to lock down his lab in New York, protect DUMMI and the rest of his bots, and report all the Iron Man suits completely destroyed in the blast.

The rest of the Avengers, wherever they were, could take care of themselves. Besides, they technically disbanded and none of them left him even a cell number, much less a forwarding address. According to JARVIS Clint, Natasha, and Agent still regularly stay at either the refurbished ‘Avengers Mansion’ that used to be the Stark ancestral home outside of New York or the private rooms in the upper levels of Stark Tower. Cap, however, was still off on his little road trip across the continent and Bruce went back to the middle of nowhere India. Sure his fellow scientist promised to visit him in his “Candyland” labs but he still abandoned him. A few weeks of bonding, or at least attempts at bonding, while helping with the clean-up of New York and Bruce thought nothing of walking away, Steve looked glad to go (yes Tony had noticed those uncomfortable and disapproving looks the Captain was almost constantly sending him, but half the time he couldn’t even tell what the looks were for), Thor was still on Asgard, and while Clint appreciated a place to stay that wasn’t on SHIELD property the other two Agents still went running back to their boss, leaving Tony alone again. In short he was on his own and he didn’t dare reach out as himself incase he risked Pepper’s safety. Threats against Tony Stark couldn’t be made if Tony Stark was (supposedly) dead.

Disconnected from JARVIS he manually operates the suit as he continues to swim away from his former home. Once he’s sure the threat of The Mandarin is gone he can come back. Hopefully it won’t take too long and everyone, especially Pepper, won’t move on without him. This was big, the stakes are too high to fail and his enemy has already proven that somehow the Iron Man suits could be hacked and controlled, destroyed remotely even. Tony probably can’t do this as himself, as Iron Man; one of his greatest strengths is now his biggest weakness. It’s time to make himself less vulnerable. What he needs is a way to make the suit impossible to hack; he needs a suit that will only respond to him. At this point he’s willing to do anything to protect Pepper. He has an old friend or two to visit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Belated Birthday! I hope it was a great day.


	2. Clint

**Clint**

Clint was probably the first one to know. Already five months after the invasion he was still on medical leave because the SHIELD shrinks thought he was having trouble after Loki’s mind-rape, which yes he was struggling with guilt, anger, loss, and the confusing bits of partial memory that he had from the time under the alien’s control but being inactive wasn’t going to help much, and they wanted to be sure there were no lingering effects before they let him back out in the field. He suspected Fury was keeping him out of the field even longer as some sort of favor to Phil, or since Hawkeye was a superhero now, because usually Clint was able to bug the shrinks into giving him an okay by now (you don’t need to be sane or fully adjusted to shoot people). Clint was bored. It used to be a sort of giant inside joke about Hawkeye’s habit of perching in the rafters, catwalks, or vents and dropping down at the most inopportune moments, making most other Agents jump, now it was a terrifying reminder of how easily he could infiltrate the base and kill them all from above. He moved out of SHIELD barracks pretty quickly.

Once he was living in Stark Tower, and the Avengers’ Mansion because he liked to switch locations occasionally as a safety precaution, there were only so many hours he could spend on the range and training before he had to find something to occupy his attention. It didn’t help that he had severe insomnia coupled with nightmares of his time as Loki’s slave. He mapped out the Tower and the Mansion through the vents and crawlspaces within the first few weeks. Eventually, when Rogers and Bruce left and later Tony moved back to California ‘temporarily’ according to Miss. Potts, Clint was left alone in silence with only his own thoughts and occasionally Natasha and Phil when they got down time between ops.

Before he had Tony during the late nights. They shared a tendency to have nightmares almost every night and often they ended up sipping coffee in silent understanding at two in the morning. By the third week after the battle it was routine to slip away from the vents above Phil’s room and down to the ones above Tony’s workshop to listen to the engineer work, the only other person still awake. He’d gotten so far as sometimes talking with Tony, only about simple things like helping Tony plan his next retaliatory prank on Fury for lying about Phil’s death. But it had been progress, according to his current SHIELD appointed shrink, and he knew that eventually Tony would be his friend. Living together, fighting together, and spending their late, or early, nights of not-being-able-to-sleep together would foster trust and hopefully friendship.

While Natasha was his partner in the field who’d killed just as many people as he had, Bruce understood what it was like waking up with only vague memories of the time your body spent hurting others, and both of them knew what it was like to have someone else control their actions, Tony had the closest personality to Clint’s. When he was off the job Clint liked joking around and pranking people. They used sarcasm to cover-up most of their real, more vulnerable, emotions and they both liked to banter, on and off the coms. So it was pretty inevitable that they’d become either best friends or best frienemies, being on the same superhero team and watching each other’s backs in battle they wouldn’t be able to be enemies or even stay distant for long.

Phil spent a couple months on bed rest recovering before going back to work. Of course while his movements were restricted he still managed to work from a tablet or his laptop computer. Clint would know since he spent the entire time Phil wasn’t conscious watching him from above, when Phil woke-up he told Clint to come down and sit at his bedside and at least pretend he was a somewhat well adjusted person. Even with everyone telling him that he wasn’t to blame for what his body did when he was under Loki’s control Clint was still having a hard time believing that; it had been his knowledge and his mind, his memories of SHIELD’s weaknesses, his body fighting for Loki. So he always slipped back to the vents when Phil fell back asleep, he didn’t deserve the right to be the one watching Phil’s back while he slept any more.

But eventually he didn’t even have his slightly distanced vigil to occupy himself when Phil was well enough for desk duty so he took to having JARVIS keep various news channels running on the screens around the house. It interrupted the silence and kept his mind too occupied to dwell on his time under Loki, which he only remembered bits of but it was coming back to him in his nightmares. He made a game of trying to spot the cover-ups, FBI, CIA, MI-6, SHIELD, IMF, and all the rest; each organization had a certain flavor to their stories if you looked hard enough. At least with all the different news stations running he didn’t have to focus on his own mess of a life. Which meant that the instant the attack on Stark’s Malibu mansion happened he knew. When all the news channels that were providing conflicting background noise suddenly switched to broadcasting the same thing he noticed.

“-broadcasting live from the ground outside Malibu, where a pair of armored helicopters launched an attack on billionaire superhero Tony Stark’s home.”

“-multiple explosions from within the mansion-”

“-plummeted off the edge of the cliff.”

“-currently occupied by Mr. Stark and his fiancé Miss. Virginia Potts-”

“-almost half the house has been lost.”

“-as more debris and chunks of what used to be a beautiful home fall-“ 

“Could this be the end of a man who just five months ago put his life on the line to save all of New York, and indeed the world, from an extraterrestrial invasion?”

“-no sign of Iron Man in the wreckage.”

He was stunned for only a moment before his eyes were darting across the screens, scanning the footage for any sign of Tony. Not again, he didn’t think he could stand watching helplessly as another co-worker and potential friend died. But there! That little speck trailing behind a chunk of floor, those looked faintly like legs kicking out behind it, maybe. Maybe he was desperate.

“JARVIS! Is Tony-?” He broke off, not sure if he really wanted to know if Tony was dead, maybe it was better to let himself hope.

“Don’t worry Agent Barton, Sir is-,” JARVIS paused before continuing in a slightly different tone. Clint didn’t know how to read an AI’s emotions so he wasn’t sure what the moment of silence and new manner meant. “My records indicate all of the Iron Man suits in the Malibu home were destroyed in the attack. The only salvageable Iron Man equipment remaining is the incomplete suit still in production at the Avengers’ Mansion. My surviving sensors indicate Miss Potts is the only human currently in Sir’s Malibu home. She does not appear to be seriously injured and the sections of the house remaining are stable according to my scans.”

Then, without pause this time, a more robotic tone without JARVIS’s usual accent echoed over the speakers throughout the private sections of the tower. “New York workshop lockdown commencing, all sentient bots to be immediately evacuated to a more secure location. Activating system override, Protocol 3E23L6C5. Biological unit detected. Designation: human. Identification tag: Agent Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton, Avenger. Unit accepted, continued access granted.”

“JARVIS?” Clint glanced nervously at the elevator where he could hear the machinery moving.

“Don’t worry, this is merely a precaution. In the event that Sir is dead Miss Potts will be given full access to all his workshops, but until his death is confirmed guidelines are in place to keep everyone safe. Sir has proven able to continue to exist even when the odds were against his survival multiple times in the past. Also, Director Fury is attempting to contact you,” JARVIS continued as he lit up a screen on the coffee table nearest Clint with an image of Director Fury. “You’ve apparently left your SHIELD issue cell phone off.”

“Oh, uh, thanks JARVIS. Can you let him through?” Clint really wished he’d thought to ask Tony about the courteousness of using JARVIS like a phone before now.

“Agent Barton!” Fury’s voice barked out of the speakers, it’s a tone that makes Clint instinctively jump to attention. “A helicopter will be arriving to pick you up in a few minutes, you’re back on duty. Agent Hill will brief you on the way to the Helicarrier. Bring your go bag, we’re sending you to India.”

“I just saw the news about Stark’s house,” Clint would like to say there’s no hesitation in his voice but that would be a lie. What he really wants, more than being re-activated, is to go help the clean-up crews search for Tony.

“Exactly. We need you to get to Banner before the news does.” He can just imagine the look that accompanies that request. Fury is sending him to pick-up Bruce before he can hear about Tony some other way and hopefully keep him calm enough to not let the Hulk out.

“On my way, Sir,” Clint lifted himself into the nearest air duct and grabbed his go bag from its place in the vents on his way up to the roof. JARVIS shut off the lights behind him leaving the top of the tower dark and empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again MsD texted this to me to post for her.


	3. Phil

**Phil**

Bzzt...bzzzzt... Irregular vibrations of his cell phone against the table break the fragile calm wrapped around the office of the safe house, an area Phil took over as soon as he arrived. A milk run to get back in the saddle, playing backup as the Black Widow observed an up and coming mob boss was pretty pointless. He knew it wouldn’t be Agent Romanoff, not when she had the comm. unit and her panic button still on, which left someone back at SHIELD.

As he reached for his cell phone Phil almost hesitated; this could be one of those calls, like the one he’d made to Romanoff less than six months ago. Phil wasn’t ready to hear that Barton had a relapse, or Barton tried to kill himself, or Stark Tower was destroyed while Barton was still inside, or even that Barton finally got bored enough of medical leave to run off and get himself into trouble. But he didn’t let his hand slow or allow his thumb pause before hitting the green ‘accept’ button. Holding the phone against his ear perhaps a little too carefully he answered, “Coulson.”

“Agent Coulson, there’s been an incident that required me to pull Agent Barton back into the field,” Director Fury plows right in. “We’re down an Avenger, but not one of our Agents.”

Which leaves, “has someone managed to capture the Hulk?” It’s a logical question. Stark is too high profile, and over armored, to get caught in a fight without backup arriving practically before he needs it and Captain Rogers still has his secret identity intact. Sending Hawkeye to infiltrate a base or lab holding Dr. Banner makes complete sense.

“No.” Fury’s sigh makes Phil feel suddenly so much older than he did a moment ago. “Stark is gone.” There’s an underlying tone of finality to the way he says it that clues Phil in immediately.

“You’re sure he’s not just missing? Stark has a habit of not dying.” He doesn’t let the worry he’s feeling creep out into his voice, or across his face even if he is alone. Tony Stark might not be the only superhero in the world but he’s the most famous, most well loved (because he used his brains to build that armor and that means anyone can be a hero even without superpowers), and he’s even been a hero for the longest amount of time compared to the other most famous heroes (if you ignore Roger’s time in the ice Stark has technically been saving people for longer than Captain America has).

“I just took a call from a computer that managed to sound upset when it told me that Stark was wearing one of the armors when they were all remotely hacked and remotely self-destructed. There is footage, on every major news channel across the world, of a group of armored helicopters blowing Stark’s house off the edge of a cliff with no sign of Iron Man. If Stark isn’t already dead he’s either being crushed to death under the remains of his house or bleeding out in the ocean.” His pause here is ostensibly to take a breath but it gives Phil a moment to remember that Howard was Nick’s friend and Nick knew Tony as a child and even though he’ll never admit it he did actually care about the man. “I’ve already sent a team out to contain the situation, and another team after the Mandarin who claims responsibility for the attack. I want you heading the clean-up crew. Search for any signs of Stark and make sure no one steals what’s left of his tech. Bring Romanoff with you, Barton is bringing in Banner, I’ve got a feeling we’ll need to assemble the Avengers again a lot sooner than expected.”

“And the operation we’re currently on?” Not that he wants to sit around in Europe when he could be helping rescue Stark, or preserving his legacy, but he hates leaving loose threads lying around.

“Replacements are half an hour out. They’ve already been briefed, give them the important highlights at the handover and head back here. We need to hit the ground running on this one. Footage is being sent to your tablet as we speak, catch yourselves up on the plane.” Fury hangs up without giving Phil a moment to say ‘yes, sir’ and ask any important questions he might have, which says more about how upset he is than anything else. He usually isn’t quite so abrupt with his friends.

If Tony Stark is really dead the whole world will feel the repercussions. Not just Iron Man is down, but the face of and brain behind Stark Industries International is gone too. The world’s economy will feel this blow just as harshly as the world’s security.

Romanoff’s next check in is due in twenty minutes but she’ll want more than a few minutes to deal with the news before their replacements arrive. He taps the pattern for an emergency recall against the comm. unit and waits to hear her hum an affirmative response before turning to his tablet. No time like the present to see exactly what happened to Stark, at the very least he’ll have something substantial to relay when Romanoff gets back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, still R posting what MsD is texting me.


End file.
